Anders Zorn has long been associated with a limited palette of only two colours – red (vermilion) and yellow (yellow ochre) plus black and white. It is amazing how much colour variation can be achieved with so little as grey appears as blue in the context of this limited palette – ie. black and red appears purple, black and yellow appears green. While this palette is often referred to as the Zorn Palette, he certainly wasn’t the only one to use it.
I have read recently that the Zorn Palette is often used as a teaching tool – sometimes substituting the vermilion with cadmium red light – as it provides a finite range of colour choices while still maintaining a wide enough range to handle most figure paintings.
As I was looking to experiment with with oil paints, I liked the idea of only having to fork out for a small number of new tubes and experiencing how the medium worked without being distracted with too many options. This goes hand in hand with my intention to try and replicate aspects of Zorn’s own work – I can learn about the medium, learn about utilizing a very limited palette, and learn about Zorn the artist (it is said that studying from masters of the past gives great insight to the creative process which cannot be learned from any other source).
As an introduction to how the oil paints behave and to get an initial understanding of this limited palette, I created a colour chart using just yellow ochre, cadmium red deep, ivory black and titanium white.
The top row is made up of the colours straight out of the tube, either pure or mixed with another pigment – but no white (100% Red, 2:1 Red/Yellow, 1:1 Red/Yellow, 1:2 Red/Yellow, 100% Yellow, 2:1 Yellow/Black, 1:1 Yellow/Black, 1:2 Yellow/Black, 100% Black, 2:1 Black/Red, 1:1 Black/Red, 1:2 Black/Red), the next 4 rows are progressively lightened with white, and the last 5 rows are the same as the above rows (reversed) but with a tiny amount of the colour that was not mixed in upper half of the chart (ie. first 4 rows have a tiny amount of black added, the next 4 have a tiny amount of red added and the last 4 have a tiny amount of yellow added).
I always find the process of creating a chart very enlightening and was similarly impressed by the 120 different colours I was able to achieve with this very basic palette. This chart will be a great reference when I take a leap at replicating some of Zorn’s own work.
